Years ago, Don Quixote told me that Lady Gaga is a genuinely talented performer. I protested, saying she’s just an auto-tuned exhibitionist. Tonight, at the Academy Awards, it turned out that, as is often the case, Don Quixote was right. Tonight, Lady Gaga did a staggeringly good Sound of Music tribute. It was the kind of thing that makes you entirely rethink a performer — and hope that she’s turning over a new leaf. I’ll update this post with a better quality video when I can, but this will do until then:

[UPDATE: Okay, I knew my theory was way too wacky to be true, although I had fun writing it up. Although the White House didn’t list it on the official schedule (because Thomas Lifson checked), I should have remembered that the Obama’s were hosting the annual Governor’s dinner — the one at which Chris Christie got the royal treatment and Obama kicked out reporters when things got interesting (and I’m sure they exited peacefully baa-ing, as one would expect from Obama’s sheeple media.

Incidentally, if something fish is going on with Michelle, this might be it.]

Many have commented upon Michelle Obama being beamed in to present the Best Picture Oscar. It’s certainly a cheapening of the dignity of the White House, not to mention that it’s yet another creepy chapter in the Obama cult of personality.

What I noticed was that Michelle is surrounded by a military entourage. What’s with that?

I’m not the only one who thought Michelle’s military setting was peculiar. Over at American Thinker, Thomas Lifson is also trying to figure that one out:

Speaking of that venue, who were those young men and woman wearing uniforms with braids, framing Mrs. Obama?

I don’t know much about uniforms, but they look kind of military to me. If that’s the case, what kind of event was going on at the White House that night? The President’s schedule doesn’t include any mention of a formal event at the White House.

By the time the program was over, it was almost midnight, so I am pretty sure the president wasn’t out playing golf. I wonder what was going on in the First Family’s residence that night?

I agree — there’s something weird going on here. Was the White House having its own private Academy Awards party? A lot of people do that, but what’s with dragging the military into it?

Here’s a bizarre thought, one that undoubtedly proves that I’ve had too much chocolate this morning: The Academy makes a huge deal out of the fact that results are unknown right up until the very minute the presenter reads them out loud. Is it possible that this was staged, and that Michelle actually filmed this statement hours or days before? After all, this is a make-believe presidency working closely with the chief city of The Land of Make Believe.

Of course, my little theory would require that those young men and women in uniform (Marine and Navy, I believe) either to be complicit in a fraud or, perhaps, be fraudulent themselves — that is, be actors playing dress-up in uniforms. In other words, my little theory is a very big stretch.

It certainly would be a good scandal, of the type that would directly affect Hollywood, if it turned out that this was a fake. I’ll admit that, while trickery is unlikely, it’s still incredibly distasteful to see the American military serve as a backdrop to Hollywood.

Old Hollywood, which was owned and operated by foreign-born or first generation European Jews had aspirations. What may surprise some is that these aspirations did not usually include Art (note that capital “A”).

The aspirations — or the absence of low behavior — came about in part because of the Hayes Code and the Catholic League, both of which insisted that Hollywood movies refrain from sullying innocent youth and womanhood. This meant that movies were clean or, if they weren’t as clean as one would wish, the vulgarity was subtle or the bad girl either died or repented at the end.

Because Art since the beginning of the 20th century seems to require human degradation, it was hard for Code-bound Hollywood to head in that direction. These proscriptions, of course, were gone by the late 1960s, which meant that both middle-aged and modern Hollywood leapt upon the opportunity to plumb the depths of depravity.

But it’s too simplistic to say that Old Hollywood controlled itself solely because of the Codes. These newly wealthy immigrants also wanted to belong to the country clubs. They wanted to have social polish. They wanted people to admire how far they’d come and the best way to do that was to ape the classy, high-society manners they portrayed in their own films.

Being human, few of them could live up to their own standards, but they certainly tried. And when they or their stars deviated from these “classy” standards, they had legions of employees whose sole purpose was to keep these forays into vulgarity out of the public’s eye.

The Oscars used to reflect these aspirations. They weren’t interesting, but they were upright. Bob Hope made his clean jokes, the stars wore their fancy clothes (which used to be G-rated too), and the entertainment segments weren’t particularly entertaining, but they weren’t offensive either.

This year’s Oscar show would have appalled the Louis B. Mayers, Samuel Goldwyns, and Bob Hopes. Seth MacFarlane looked like a clean-cut, 1950s boy-next-door type, and his jokes (including the shtick with William Shatner) were as unfunny as Oscar jokes always are, but that’s the only thing the show had in common with the old days. This opened as a tawdry, vulgar, nasty, mean-spirited production (including a paean to various actresses “boobs”), made worse by being broadcast during the family hour throughout large parts of America.

I have to admit that I don’t know whether the show managed to rise up slightly after the first half-hour or if it sank even lower (assuming that was possible). I would have walked out in any event because I was bored. Instead, I double-timed out, because I was both bored and disgusted. Old Hollywood would have applauded me.